Dining with the (Literary) Stars

A new contest is offering up an afternoon with top Canadian authors as a prize.

A new contest by Toronto’s pro-library movement is offering up meals and hangout time with "famous" Canadian authors as prizes. Fifty winners will be allowed to choose a writer from an all-star line-up including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Vincent Lam, and other award-winners who will take them for a lunch date and a tour of a Toronto site that inspired their work. The contest is being organized by OurPublicLibrary.to and the Toronto Public Library Workers Union with the goal of irritating Rob and Doug Ford (and possibly also something about sparking a dialogue). To enter, adults and children alike are invited to submit a short essay or video about “Why My Library Matters to Me.” Don’t want Lam for lunch? Try The Edible Woman. (OK fine, you try to make a pun about Margaret Atwood novels.)